


rendering death and forever

by irishmizzy



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M, Past Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishmizzy/pseuds/irishmizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time heals most wounds. Freddie and Bel, after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rendering death and forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizimajig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/gifts).



i.

"How could you?" she asks. He won't answer. She asks him every day, and every day she's met with nothing.

 _It could be months,_ the nurse had said. It's all Bel can hear, echoing in the silence of the cold hospital room. Echoing louder than all the other thoughts in her head. _Months_. It's hardly been a week and she already feels as if she's splitting open at the seams.

**

Lying in his hospital bed, Freddie is a shadow of himself. The bruises have faded with time; now he looks like he's sleeping. That's the injustice of it. He's resting peacefully while Bel's every day is a waking nightmare.

"How could you?" 

She wants to dig her nails into the pale skin of his wrist, to drag him kicking and screaming back to consciousness. She settles for squeezing his wrist, feeling the weak flutter of his pulse beneath her fingertips. 

It isn't as reassuring as the doctors seem to find it.

**

They tell her to go about her life, that he'll wake when he wakes. _If he wakes at all_ , they don't say, but Bel hears it all the same.

**

Days bleed into weeks. The news stops for no man, and Freddie, exceptional though he was, is no exception. Bel forces herself forward, trying to find her footing now that the ground has shifted, realigned, formed an entirely new continent under her feet.

She works. She sleeps. She reads the paper aloud to Freddie. He doesn't talk back.

She waits.

 

 

ii.

When the call comes, Bel sags against her desk. Her chest feels as if it is cracking open, relief spilling out like a tidal wave. 

"A surprising turn of events," the doctor calls it. "Miraculous, you could say." 

Bel presses her knuckles to her lips to smother the laughter, the tears. "Yes," she agrees. Freddie has never done anything but defy odds.

**

"Freddie," she chokes out, only belatedly realizing she's breathless, her heart thudding wildly in her chest. 

He is lying limp in his bed like a rag doll, the same as ever. But this time he turns his head slowly when she speaks. 

"Hello, Moneypenny." His voice is hoarse from disuse, thick with morphine. His lips curl into the faintest smile; Bel is across the room before she realizes.

His beard is rough against her palms, but his cheeks are warm under her lips. She smiles against his forehead. _Alive_ , she thinks, sliding her hand down to his chest to feel his beating heart. _Awake._

**

"Look, progress," he says, gesturing to how he's sitting up on his own now. The sunlight from the window makes a mockery of the harsh angles of his face. He's shaved since she was last here, or someone has shaved for him. He looks like a proper invalid now, pale and gaunt.

Bel touches the line of his jaw carefully. Remembers a time when her hands had come away tacky with blood. She can't stop the sigh that escapes.

"Bel." Freddie's voice is steady, calm. It is the only part of him she recognizes anymore. Everything else is too frail, too fragile. He holds her gaze, takes in the sadness she knows is evident on her face. After a moment he sighs, too, says, "I don't regret it, you know."

He smiles up at her and Bel feels as if her blood is curdling. Her palm itches with the urge to slap him, her chest going tight. She takes a step back as the anger swells inside her until she feels sick with it.

"I'd do it again," Freddie says. His voice is louder now, chasing after her as she backs away. "Bel."

"I know," she manages, before turning on her heel. Her footsteps echo in the hallway, her heartbeat matching the _how could you how could you how could you_ echoing through her mind.

**

She buries herself in work, times her visits carefully so Freddie is asleep when she arrives.

Funny. All those hours wishing for him to wake up and now she can't bear it. She can't look him in the eye anymore, not without wanting to shake him until he takes it all back. 

Avoiding him may be cowardly, but of the two of them, Bel has never been brave.

 

 

iii.

"She'll take it from here." Freddie tips his head back to smile at his nurse. Bel shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. She hadn't expected him to be awake. Freddie smirks at her like he knew that, like he knows he's bested her. "Tally ho," he says, laughing to himself when Bel begins to push his wheelchair across the hospital grounds.

**

It happens again. And again. 

More often than not, Freddie is awake when she arrives, smirking at her from his rickety chair. He talks about nothing and everything while she wheels him through the halls and across the lawn. The color returns to his cheeks and Bel feels the anger slowly dissipating, like the ground thawing after a long winter.

**

"You can't be angry with me forever," Freddie says one afternoon.

Bel takes a long drag from her cigarette, exhales before she turns to him. She has never not known what to say to Freddie, but lately she’s been at a loss. After a moment she says, "I'm not.”

They're in the hospital gardens now, where the air is cold despite the sun. She doubts the fresh air is doing him any good, despite his doctor's insistence.

Freddie scoffs. She nudges his shoulder with his own before she remembers. "Sorry," she says, frowning at the lines of pain etched into his forehead. She wants to smooth them out. She takes another drag of her cigarette instead.

"I'm not," she repeats. She isn't, not anymore. Not like she was. Freddie doesn't scoff this time, merely hums, barely an acknowledgement. Overhead a bird circles, a black spot against the blue sky.

“I thought you were dead,” she says eventually. It occurs to her that she’s never said it out loud, not to anyone. Her blood still runs cold when she thinks of that night. Now is no different.

Freddie reaches for her. His movements are stiff, pained. He catches her wrist, strokes his thumb over the bone there. 

“I’m not, though.” He squeezes her wrist and she inhales sharply, remembers with startling clarity the press of his fingers against the nape of her neck as he’d kissed her. It had felt like a promise then. It feels like one now. Something inside cracks open at the thought and she twists out of his grasp, ignoring the hurt look on her face.

“Do you know what that was like, Freddie? Seeing you like that? Wondering if you’d wake up?” Her throat hurts, closing up around the words. She feels like she’s choking on them, on everything she’s held back since. “It was awful.”

“It’s alright,” he says calmly, hands out like she’s a spooked horse. “I’m alright.”

She waves at his wheelchair, at the dark circles under his eyes that belie his health. She knows what he looks like when he hasn’t been sleeping. “You’re _not_.”

He winces when he shrugs. “I will be.”

When he smiles he looks the same as ever. Bel feels the fight draining out of her. She’s exhausted suddenly.

“Freddie,” she says helplessly, her voice cracking. She doesn’t know what else to say. There is so much but she can’t find the words. She’s not sure there even _are_ words.

He reaches for her again, his movements careful and tentative. There is a warmth in his eyes that slices right to her core. She has missed him so much, like a limb, like a vital organ. 

He says, “Bel,” as if there’s nothing else to say. 

Somehow, it's enough.

**

“I’m sorry,” he says. There’s a crackling on the phone line that makes him sound even farther away than she knows he is.

“Freddie --”

“I don’t regret it, of course, but I just felt --” He inhales deeply. “I am sorry.”

"Freddie." Bel touches her temple, feels her pulse beating. She’s a show to put on in twenty minutes. She doesn't know how she'll manage with her heart feeling like it's simultaneously too small and too large for her ribcage. She takes a ragged breath. "I know."

 

 

iv.

He walks like a newborn colt, skittish and uncertain, traveling the corridors in slippers she recognizes as having belonged to his father, once upon a time. 

He stops once he reaches her. His breathing is labored, his face drawn. Bel fights the urge to smooth back his fringe, curls her hands into fists at her sides to be sure.

“Don’t,” he says. 

She presses her lips together but can’t quite stop the smile. “I wouldn’t dare.” 

She crooks her elbow, a peace offering, and waits quietly for Freddie to turn around before he takes hold and they begin the long, slow shuffle back to his room. She doesn’t let herself think of the way he used to move, always in a hurry, his hand on her arm sweeping her along with him like the tide takes the sand. His hand grips tighter now, out of necessity, like she’s the only thing keeping him upright.

 

 

v.

Better, yes, the doctors agree, but he is not yet well. Bel watches through the small windowpane in the door as a nurse helps Freddie rotate his shoulder.

She knows what his doctors aren’t saying, that he can’t manage on his own. But she also knows he is reaching his limit, caged here like a bird. 

**

“Stay with me,” Bel offers, and watches his face split in half with a smile. It’s a rare sight these days. She can’t remember the last time he looked lit up from within. She reaches for him and he catches her hand, kisses her fingertips. Her thumb brushes the curve of his chin. She’s acutely aware of its fragility now, the delicate shift of bone under skin. She used to think he was invincible.

“You’ll grow sick of me.”

She laughs, smoothing her hand down the front of his pajama shirt. It hangs baggy on his still too-thin frame. “I haven’t yet.”

When she looks up, he’s still smiling. She touches the corner of his mouth reverently, finds herself wishing he would never stop.

**

He is released on a Sunday. There are church bells ringing in the distance. Bel's first thought is of the sirens that cut through the night when Freddie first arrived here.

He slips his hand into the curve of her elbow. "Shall we?"

She covers his hand with her own, squeezes once before taking a step forward. Neither of them spares a glance back.

 

 

vi. 

Time heals all wounds, they say. Not true. Most, yes, but not all. Never all.

**

She hears him moving late in the night, hears the whistle of the kettle and the clatter of china. 

“Freddie,” she says, trying not to sound annoyed. “It’s late.” 

“Sorry.” He turns off the stove. His eyes are red, his hands shaking. Bel takes a step towards him, tries not to feel insulted when he flinches away.

“Are you --” 

“It’s fine,” he says, clipped. And then, softer, “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Go back to sleep.” 

She watches the way he holds the counter, the tense lines of his forearm, his shoulders, as if he’ll collapse if he lets go. 

“Freddie.” 

“Goodnight, Bel.”

**

There are constant reminders. His eyes take longer to focus now, and words don't come as easily to him. His knuckles are knotted, gnarled where the joints have been displaced and reset. The newspaper crinkles in his fists as he tries to fight the headache that must be pounding against his skull. He is still slower, hesitant almost.

Watching him move about the kitchen, humming with the radio while he does the washing up, Bel wonders when she'll stop cataloguing the ways he's changed. If she ever will.

“If you’re going to stand there,” he says, “at least lend a hand.”

He flicks his fingers at her, droplets of water raining on her face. She gasps and reaches over to wet her hand to retaliate. It ends in a struggle, wet handprints on both their shirts, laughter drowning out the music.

Bel ducks her head, still laughing, and breathes in the smell of Freddie’s collar. His hand curls around her waist, holding her close. She can feel his smile against her hair. He smells of her laundry soap now, but underneath that is the same. Always the same.

 

 

vii.

“That went well,” Freddie says as soon as she’s through the door.

Bel shakes the rain out of her hair and laughs. “You saw?”

He rarely watches these days, television just another in a long list of things that gives him a headache. But he nods, face alight. 

She laughs again, feels the weight of weeks’ worth of work sliding off her shoulders now that the story’s broken.

“It was brilliant,” he says. There are tired lines etched across his face but he seems to be vibrating with the same giddy energy she is. He misses it so much more than he ever lets on. “You were brilliant.”

Bel is still laughing when she reaches for him, her hands cold and damp from the rain. 

“Thank you,” she says, her lips brushing his. She can feel it with her whole body when he shivers; she only holds him closer, tighter. His fingers are warm and solid against the nape of her neck, the same as she remembers. 

“Bel,” he says, his thumb sliding along the column of her throat. He swallows up any possible response she could have and she’s glad for it.

In the morning she’ll find bruises on her hips, evidence that he is holding onto her just as tightly. Right now she slides her palm under the hem of his shirt until she can rake her nails across his the small of his back, teasing. His hips jerk and he presses even closer to her, laughing against her jaw. It feels like a key turning in a lock, like something that was missing is finally sliding into its rightful place.

**

Everyone knows: if you love something, let it go. On those long, lonely mornings at Freddie’s bedside she’d wished she’d held on with both hands, had never let him out of her sight in the first place. 

He has come back to her twice now. Bel isn’t foolish enough to believe she’s allowed an infinite number of chances. 

 

 

viii. 

He moves like an old man these days. He sleeps like someone who’s been through a war. Bel wakes in the middle of the night to an empty bed and Freddie perched on the windowsill. He looks so pale in the moonlight. He always has.

She touches his shoulder; he leans into it. He turns his head, presses a kiss to her forearm. His nose is cold where it brushes her skin.

“It’s late,” she says, pulling away. “Come back to bed.” 

Bel holds out her hand and waits.


End file.
